The 1922-S once ranked among the leading rarities in the Saint-Gaudens double eagle series of 1907 to 1933, even placing ahead of such highly touted issues as the 1920-S, 1929, 1930-S, 1931 and 1932. It is almost certainly the case that the majority of the 2,658,000-piece mintage remained undistributed in government vaults, the coins being melted in 1937. Beginning in the 1950s, however, small quantities began turning up overseas in the holdings of foreign banks, mostly European, although in 1983 a hoard of nearly 200 examples turned up in Central America. Many of the exported coins were melted overseas — the fate of most U.S. gold coins that left these shores as part of the export trade. The eventual repatriation of the survivors readjusted the overall rarity ranking of the 1922-S within the Saint-Gaudens series. These coins provide today's collectors with a nice pool of Mint State examples from which to choose.

In spite of the appearance of the aforementioned pieces, the 1922-S still ranks among the scarcer double eagles of the Saint-Gaudens type. Writing in the 2008 revision to David W. Akers' classic work A Handbook of 20th Century United States Gold Coins: 1907-1933, our cataloger ranks the 1922-S 19th out of the 53 issues in this series in terms of total number of Mint State coins known. What's more, the vast majority of Mint State coins in today's market are confined to the MS-60 to MS-63 grade range. Even so, this issue remains scarce in solidly graded, attractive MS-64, and is regarded as an important condition rarity in Gem Mint State. In fact, there are probably fewer than 30 or 35 examples of this issue extant that grade MS-65 or finer — a paltry total especially considering the popularity of the Saint-Gaudens double eagle series among advanced collectors.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the August 2019 Rosemont ANA Auction, where it realized $192,000.